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Nous

We
Encounters 2021
© Sarah Blum
The RER B is an urban train that traverses Paris and its environs from north to south. Multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker Alice Diop takes us through these suburban spaces and confronts us with some of the faces and stories of which they are composed.
A moving testament to the importance of filming as a process of bearing witness and remembering, Nous is timely in many ways. It is subtle and shrewd in a world that favours shortcuts and easy answers. Justifiably adopting the fragmented structure of a patchwork portrait in order to describe a riven society, Diop displays impressive control of her essay and its impact. In the film’s first few minutes, a deer is observed, through binoculars. A certain sense of awkward, man-made distance stays with us. Isolation, discrimination and nostalgia for hierarchies, inherited from a monarchical past … Divisions haunt France’s present. But the human urge to give as well as to receive stubbornly creeps into every situation, observed or triggered. Could this be the one thing that still keeps a nation together?
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by Alice Diop
with Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko, N’deye Sighane Diop, Pierre Bergounioux, Bamba Sibi, Marcel Balnoas, Ethan Balnoas France 2020 French 115’ Colour Documentary form

Part of the Berlinale Summer Special

With

  • Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko
  • N’deye Sighane Diop
  • Pierre Bergounioux
  • Bamba Sibi
  • Marcel Balnoas
  • Ethan Balnoas

Crew

Director Alice Diop
Cinematography Sarah Blum, Sylvain Verdet, Clément Alline
Editing Amrita David
Sound Mathieu Farnarier
Producer Sophie Salbot

World Sales

Totem Films

Produced by

Athénaïse

Photos

Galas & Awards

Galas & Awards

Alice Diop

© Cyrille Choupas

Born in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France. Her films, which question French society and its cultural diversity, have screened at festivals including Cinéma du Réel in Paris, BFI London, Karlovy Vary, the Viennale and the documentary film festival in Lussas, France. Her feature-length documentary On Call won the main prize at Cinéma du Réel while her short film Towards tenderness won the 2017 César French film prize for Best Short Film.

Filmography (documentaries)

2006 Clichy pour l’Exemple · La Tour du Monde 2007 Les Senegalaises et la Senegauloise 2011 La Mort de Danton (Danton death) 2016 Vers la Tendresse (Towards tenderness) · La Permanence (On Call) 2020 Nous (We)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2021